Five Times They Kiss And One Time They Doesn't
by Aya-kun Rose
Summary: Shameless Karma/Riven for a friend.
1. 5

The gangplank swarms with passengers and their belongings, awash with buoyant chatter and seaworthy shouts as everyone readies for the voyage. It's a steam ship, one of Ionia's first, of Piltovian design but built from the keel up in this very harbor.

Riven's bound for Piltover, and from there she'll take one of their airships straight to Noxus. It feels like a final mile, the last demon of her past to defeat before – before what? _The rest of her life_, that's what Karma tells her.

She's halfway up the gangplank before she does what she swore she wouldn't do. Turning against the tide, she dances and weaves through the crowd, down to where Karma's standing on the wharf with a half smile and a look that says she's not surprised.

It does surprise her when, out of breath and in full view of the passerby, Riven takes her by the chin and tips her face up into a hasty kiss. Karma's arms go to her shoulders, but it's not to push her away; when Riven tries to pull back she ends up getting crushed to Karma in a fierce embrace.

"Hey," she says into Karma's neck, "I'm not leaving forever."

Somewhere above her ear, in her hair, she hears the words, "I know." People have got to be staring by now. She doesn't know if she cares.

"Thank you." She breathes the words as she lifts her head and Karma lets her slip a step backwards. There's vivid fire in Karma's eyes and it feels like the quiet woman is appraising her, digging into every crack and prying up loose joint that is Riven's lifetime of mistakes and failures. Even now, Riven shivers.

Karma places her palms on both sides of Riven's face and pulls her down to brush her lips to her forehead. It's a benediction, a blessing, a sign that for all her faults she's still worthy of Karma's respect. It's a confirmation of so much more than either could ever put to words.

Luckily, they don't have to.

Riven's sure her face is redder than it ought to be – there's kissing in public and then there's _a kiss_ in public – but Karma squeezes her hand and adjusts the strap of her bag for her and the horn of the great ship reminds her that there's somewhere she's got to be.

"Go on," Karma urges. "Be safe and come home to me when you're ready."

Riven nods, letting the last-minute rush of traffic carry her out of arm's reach. Wordless joy fills her at the thought of conquering this final demon and coming back a hero for once. Coming back home. She sticks her arm into the air and shouts above the crowd, "Keep the kettle on for me!"


	2. 4

The moon is a delicate sliver reflecting in the still waters of the pond when Riven gets back to the estate and unstraps her sandals at the veranda step. Wisteria and pine cloak her in the scents of home and she breathes deep on her silent stroll down the warm wood towards the lantern glow of their room.

The paper door glides open, bringing the humid night in with her. Karma kneels at her desk, hair still damp from the bath, a hand neatly pinning the sleeve of her summer robe near her elbow to keep it from spilling into her ink pot.

She glances up but briefly, brush pressed lightly to the parchment, before finishing the execution of her stroke with a graceful flourish. "Welcome home," she says as Riven closes the door behind her.

Riven nods, "I'm back." She stands a minute, watching Karma sweep through the rest of the character, solitary and enormous on the page, each fluid motion deliberate and focused. She's never really understood the ceremony of writing, much less the words themselves, and she's never felt less confident than when Karma puts a brush in her hand. But somehow Karma makes it look as easy as breathing.

While Karma studies the finished product, Riven pads off to deposit her armor and gear. When she circles back to Karma, the woman blinks up from the paper, a soft smile creasing the corners of her eyes. Riven puts a hand to Karma's shoulder and sinks to the mats at her side.

"What are you meditating on today?" She squints at the wet ink dark on the paper and tries to divine some meaning out of it.

"Reflection," Karma answers with a small laugh. "Some call it the Redundant Tenet."

"I see," Riven smiles. She does. Sort of.

Karma's lips do that familiar dance where she finds Riven's spiritual illiteracy amusing but doesn't want to laugh in her face. To better hide it, she kisses Riven fondly on the cheek and then effortlessly changes the subject. "The bath's still hot, and there's dinner when you're finished."

Karma's eyes sparkle like cut emeralds when she leans away and, looking into them, Riven suddenly feels like she's falling.

Riven's hand slips to the small of Karma's back and she glides her fingertips across the silk, her callouses catching slightly on the smooth fabric. They sit there like that for a moment because Riven can't move, can hardly breathe, pinned by a tight heat in her chest. She has to clear her throat before she speaks.

"Reflection, huh? I'll go . . . try it." She gets to her feet and stumbles to the door, exiting into a summer night only half as warm as the eyes following her out. The waiting bath only scalds a fraction as much as the fire that's begun to burn suspiciously close to her heart.


	3. 3

There's only so much teasing Riven can take before she rises smoothly to her feet. Karma's chuckle is rich and welcoming when the long-suffering guard turns away from her dutiful surveillance of their tranquil courtyard and steps inside their chambers.

"In need of a distraction?" Riven asks in a smiling murmur. "Something tells me your mind's not on your work."

Karma sits behind her writing table, neatly blanketed with documents of no small importance. But the brush lies untouched and the ink tray is empty. Her palm is raised, a greenish wash of energy coiling lazily around her hand. For the eighth time in the last half hour, she tosses it at Riven like a schoolgirl trying to provoke a response.

Riven grins into the puff of air as it gusts into her face and gladly rises to the bait. "On your feet," she orders, coming around with her hand out to help Karma up. "It can't be good for you, all this nonstop kneeling."

"Oh?" Karma laughs, taking Riven's hand and standing. "What alternative can you recommend?"

Riven grins like a wild beast and takes Karma's other hand. It's an easy feat to back Karma against one of the estate's sturdy inner walls, pinning her wrists overhead to a varnished beam. "I can think of a couple of things," Riven growls into the side Karma's neck.

Karma's response is vocal and wordless, her hands clenching but otherwise surrendering to Riven's hold. She smells like jasmine and fine parchment and Riven can't resist tasting the hollow of her throat.

There's a stifled moan from above, a quiet thing bitten back. Riven looks up to see Karma's got her lip between her teeth and that just won't do at all. She straightens, pulling Karma's arms down onto her shoulders and keeping her in place with a brazen press of her hips.

Her hands wrap around the curve of Karma's shoulders as unseen fingers start to work the tie of her bun out of place. Riven leans in, drawing Karma's lip free from its prison with her own. "Such a shame," she says, teasing Karma with fleeting kisses at random between her words. "Letting yourself get this tense. Let me loosen you up."

Karma doesn't hold back this time, allowing a low rumble to convey her appreciation of this idea. Her thigh comes sliding up alongside Riven's hip, inviting, but Riven takes it in a warm hand and gently guides it back.

And then she follows it down.

"I thought you advised against kneeling," Karma manages, rubbing pleased circles into Riven's scalp.

Riven hums, lips caressing a flare of emerald ink on dark skin. She sits back and looks up, a picture of innocence. "Would you prefer something else?" As she says this, she slides her hands neatly up the back of Karma's thighs.

Even with words momentarily beyond her grasp, Karma knows how to tell Riven to stay right where she is.


	4. 2

The meditation helps more than she'd be willing to admit. Right now, as the torrent of the remote waterfall presses around her with unyielding force, Riven is free to clear her mind and let go.

Gone is the guilt about what she's done and what she's left behind. Her identity, her standing, her name, all of it ceases to bear relevance under the deluge. It's hard to lend import to the specters of your past when each and every breath is a living battle. All that's left is her flesh and bones, straining against the pressure, fighting to stay alive.

It's unlike any training they'd put her through back home and she revels in it. Anything to put distance between the person she was an the person she ought to be – hell she'd walk a tightrope strung over the mouth of a smoking volcano for a chance at outstripping those memories that still chase her down most nights.

Ionia is nothing like what they say back home, and there's so much to learn about what the island nation really is. There's so much for Riven to learn, period, but her ignorance of this land, of its people she'd attempted to subdue and their customs she had previously ridiculed, is inexcusable.

Karma excuses her, on good days, and patiently points out the errors of her long-held beliefs on not so good days. Riven has to breathe, take a step back, and remember she's not in Noxus anymore. Little by little, she gets better. She gets stronger. She gets wiser.

When she can stand the rigors of the waterfall no longer, she collects the remnants of her will and rises shaking to her feet. The difference one step makes: where in one moment her world is a narrow roar of crashing water pressing down down _down_, the next is like waking from a nightmare to the peaceful dawn of a new day.

Still, there's a strong dreamlike sense to seeing Karma perched on the steep side of the pool waiting for her. Something surreal about her effortless tranquility that somehow can soothe Riven's exhaustion even at a distance. Riven hadn't meant to smile but Karma wins one out of her anyway with nothing more than a simple once over.

"Meditating hard or hardly meditating?" Riven asks, flipping her soaked hair out of her face. The spray from the waterfall behind her stings on her over-sensitized skin and she sloshes forward through the knee high pool.

Karma sits cross-legged with her hands palm up on her knees, but Riven knows well how serene and soft her face gets when she's in the zone, and this cheeky grin does not indicate that a successful session is on the books for today. "A little of both," Karma allows. She allows her gaze, as well, to wander, tracking down down _down_.

Riven reaches the edge and tucks her hand shyly under Karma's chin and lifts it, all the while wondering if this is real, if this is something she can actually do.

It's not so much a smile as it is the sun breaking over the horizon and lighting up all the shadowed corners in Riven's life and it's almost more than she can hold. Karma's hands lift from her lap and slide warm onto her hips, urging her on with just a hint of expectation.

So Riven leans in and lets go.


	5. 1

Karma's robe is this sleek thing of midnight blue, with negative space cranes gliding through slender silver clouds. Riven walks at her side dressed in robes of a similar cut; hers a rich forest green, an overcoat of a warm reddish-brown draped over her shoulders.

Riven hadn't expected traditional Ionian festive wear to be this comfortable – she'd fully expected to feel foolish and awkward, especially after the ordeal of trying to dress herself unattended. The outfit is more complicated than what she's used to, but now that she's been out all evening amongst the locals, Riven feels more at home than she's ever felt since coming here.

And then there's Karma – her hair's done up and there's rouge on her cheeks, but it's the quiet brilliance radiating from her that attracts Riven the most. People stop them along the lantern-lit streets, adults offering paper tokens, their children delivering humble bows before skipping on their way. Karma accepts each and every gift as if it means the world to her, without regard for how little it may have cost to give.

This is the Spirit of Ionia, strolling through a midsummer festival arm-in-arm with a feared and hated Noxian, and her smile is as peaceful as Riven's ever seen it. Damn it, Riven's never thought of her as more beautiful than on this night, in those clothes, under these stars.

She stops in the blue-black shadow of an ancient tree tumbling over the temple's wall and Karma turns curiously to see what might have stayed her. Riven swallows hard, those patient, caring eyes altogether too much to bear as her nerve boils over.

"The fireworks –" Karma is saying, but her words are stopped by Riven. By Riven's lips pressing quick and chaste to her own, killing the rest of the sentence before it escapes.

Riven's heart is a war drum in her chest, and she darts back as swiftly as she'd come, dropping Karma's hand she'd been holding all this time. She can't breathe, can't see, can't _think_ because she must be crazy, she must have lost her mind because one does not simply kiss _Karma_, Ionia's _Enlightened One_, and expect that to be okay.

"Riven," Karma says, and something about the way she speaks the name sends shivers through the subject, despite the heat of the night pressing in around them. Riven dares to hope, to breathe, to look up and –

There's a hand at her waist and one on her neck below her jaw and she's embarrassed to have let her guard down but she can't stop (doesn't want to stop) Karma from spinning her on the spot, backing her up against the white-plastered wall of the temple. She doesn't stop Karma from returning the kiss, which this time is a hundred times less innocent and a hundred times better.

Riven struggles to maintain her composure and remember that they're two public figures out on a public road and it may be dark but it surely isn't dark enough. Her head is abuzz with possibility when they part, and she has to quickly swallow a surge of primal victory at seeing Karma, always so pristine and untouchable, with hooded eyes and glistening lips.

She clears her throat, tucking a stray wisp of Karma's hair back into place. "So, you mentioned fireworks?"


	6. 0

There's no honor in the gallows. Even as a public spectacle, it amounts to little more than taking out the trash. Only the scum of Ionia deserve the gallows – and there's only one more man to swing before it's her turn.

Riven welcomes it.

She's been dead on her feet for weeks now, all bones and no muscle, the bite of Zaun's masterpiece slowly eating her away from the inside. Her ruined sword, even at only a fraction of its original weight, had become too heavy to carry in the days before her capture.

She'd dragged in through the streets behind her like the death sentence it was, too tired to hide her face and too weak to run. So long she'd wandered the wild country far north from any town her company had razed, running from the ghosts of her past. But those ghosts had chased her back again, the poison reminding her that she could only outrun her fate for so long.

Better to give the Ionians the retribution they deserve than to waste away on some forgotten mountainside, nameless and screaming. Then, maybe, her death would have some purpose.

The man before her goes up the time-worn steps without a word; the assembled crowd neither jeers nor curses him, rather watching with solemn civility as justice is enacted. Sometimes it's hard for Riven to remember why, back in Noxus, she had understood these people to be barbarians.

It's Riven who feels barbaric, clambering stiffly onto her numb legs as a stoic guard hauls her up. Soon, though, it won't feel like her blood is trying to burn its way through her skin. Soon, she won't feel anything at all.

The guard steadies her, pushes her forward, but something's wrong, terribly terribly wrong. The gallows steps are right there, but he's steering her to the side and away from the platform. Back towards the ramshackle holding cells that reek of regret and resignation.

Her head spins and it's not the acidic effect of the chemicals that makes her dizzy. She's reeling, sick to her stomach, as he pushes her down onto a rough bench and disappears back out into the sunlight. Is she not meant to be hanged after all? Is it too good for a filthy Noxian?

Riven's head hangs and she sits shaking in the squalid darkness of the cell for many minutes before the door opens and a fresh breeze touches her face.

Cool fingertips dig in under her chin and force her head up. Riven complies, there's no fight left in her. Standing before her is the last person she'd ever expected to see, one of the Elders of the Ionian government.

"You're the Noxian defector," the woman says. It's not a question. "What's your name?"

Riven's shoulders twitch in a weary shrug. "Does it matter?"

The woman's smile is tight but not hostile. She removes her hand and Riven's head dips without the support. "Maybe it doesn't," she agrees, "Maybe you'll make a fool of me. But I'd like to think that it does, and you won't. Noxian, would you like a chance to redeem yourself?"

Riven deflates. "I don't think I can," she whispers.

But the Ionian kneels in front of her and Riven's head is still spinning, spinning. "What do you say we find out? Together."


End file.
